We're at the Austin Nature Center for a Halloween bash. Ike is dressed as a dragon. He forgot to wear underwear. And he just informed me there's a hole by his peepee. Could be an interesting night.

Someone told me tonight he was going to marry me when he grew up. Dr. Freud, meet Ike Dollahon.

 Note that the Tooth Fairy (aka Shep) wrote tonight:

Dear Eva,

I do exist, except the Tooth Fairy Queen won’t let me give you proof because remember about that boy who went to Fairy Land? And made a lot of mischief? That’s the reason. Sorry, I can’t show you any proof. But please believe in me. 

Sincerely,

The Tooth Fairy

Tonight during prayers I asked Shep to say what he was thankful about. He said, "Thank you God for making me so awesome." I think we have a little more discipleship to do...

Ike got in trouble for something. After I fussed at him, he asked, "Mom, do you still love me?"

"Yes, I always love you," I answered. Then, I thought to ask, "Do you still love me?"

"Nope."

Shep: 'Mom, I'm growing up. I'm learning new words like democracy, mechanism, confidence, privacy...'

Eva Rose: 'I've been using all those words for months now.'

Ike just filled his water blaster gun with toilet water. And I don't mean perfume.

Ike just filled his water blaster gun with toilet water. And I don't mean perfume.

Email from Mimi

Things Ike said when we were in Mexico:

That "a man is going to put new things in my house."

You are going to live "for 10 weeks" in Austin. Glad it's only a temporary stay! I had no idea!

He has three grandmothers, "Gigi, Great-grandmother and Mimi."

Great-grandmother is "in Heaven with Jesus."

I teased him about his boiled eggs that they were dinosaur eggs, dog eggs, etc. He frowned and told me that "No! Birds have eggs! NOT ANIMALS!"

He has been funny and enjoys a laugh when I tease him and has been a very sweet kid.

~~~~

Raining again - but Steph. had told me that Meyer Branch Library was having story time at 1:30 and that there was going to be a juggler! So Dad and I took Ike and met her  and  the juggler looked a bit like Dick Van Dyke (about aged 50+) and used to work in Vegas and at first I thought....Oooooooooooooooooooo....he wore a jester's hat and shirt and made a lot of crazy faces right off the bat. Kind of you know...creepy.

 

But he got better and better as time went on and actually rode on a unicycle and THEN actually balanced it ON HIS CHIN while juggling three of those longish juggling things! He did a magic trick with scarves and had all these little kids hootin' and hollarin'! Ike was amazed! Hattie, Ike and Mary Ellen all got to do something and virtually all of the kids old enough at least tossed him a cloth ball to juggle or something. Ike tossed him a scarf back. It was really quite a show!

 

Later I took Ike to the mall and he was not at all interested in the play area. Too many kids, too big and noisy and all of that. So we had lunch and watched the ice skaters (Memorial City Mall) and on the way home he said such a funny thing.

 

"Bicycles don't have ONE wheel! They have TWO wheels!"  He had been mulling that over for hours.

 

He said that his Mom and Dad and siblings could all ice skate. "But not Gigi or Mimi. They would fall down."

 

He has appreciated his daily gifts and actually I just remembered to give him the Wednesday one. I will do that in a while.

 

"I wish we were rich."

 

"I wish birds didn't poop. They poop on cars and on windows! Eeeewweeee.......!"

 

~~~

Maggie learned that her sister (who had traveled to Mexico on a different plane than her) was able to watch movies on personalized mini-monitors on the seat back in front of her seat.

Maggie was AMAZED at this and wanted learn more.

Maggie (eyes wide in amazement): What sort of movies did you watch? Were they wrestling movies? Jesus movies?

Yep, those would be the first two movie genres that would pop in my heads too. "Wrestling" movies and "Jesus" movies.

Shep: What does forwegian mean?
Me: Norwegian means from Norway.
Shep: No, not Norwegian. Forwegian. F-o-r-e-i-g-n.

Walker Dollahon

May 23, 2012 · 

So Missy Hooks Dollahon goes to a plastic surgeon's office for a post-op check-up from her recent abdominal surgery and Ike find something to play with...look very, very closely...

Eva Rose: So...how does the baby come out of the mommy?
Me: It comes out of the mommy's vagina.
Eva Rose: What's that?
Me: A hole down there.
Eva Rose: A hole down where?
Me: Down here.
Eva Rose: (startled) OOhhh. How big is the va...gina?
Shep (walking in): It's bigger than Texas.
Me: What??
Shep: Yeah. It's bigger than Texas. China is WAY bigger than Texas.

Walker: Maggie, are you beautiful?
Maggie: YES!
Walker: how do you know you're beautiful?
Maggie: Because I have long hair, and green eyes, and I don't fart too much.

(but in Maggie speak: Becuz I have wong hai, and gween eyes, an I don faught too much.)

Maggie: Mom, how did God get so powerful?
Me: I don't know Maggie.
Maggie: Well can you google it?
Me: No, Google doesn't know either!
Maggie: What about Siri? Ask Siri.

Walker Dollahon

April 14, 2012 near Klein · 

 

Allowed on Timeline

Mags with My Widdle Ponys. Ike with cars. Hard-wired.

Walker Dollahon

April 5, 2012 · 

Ike had his birthday yesterday and the family went out and celebrated. Can you tell which of my children was super jealous all day?????

At Natural Bridge Caverns:

The littles got a little scared.
Ike said 'are there lions and bears in here?' and on one dark place 'I want my bear.'

Tree --> nut

4:23pm

Shepherd: Mom, I'm a child prodigy.




10:18pm

Walker: Wow, I am such a savant.

love note

Shep had a spelling test and his teacher said to spell his full name - DOH. He totally butchered his middle name Emmanuel. Which led to the revelation that Eva Rose had no idea how to spell her proper name, Evangeline. And don't even ask if Maggie can spell Magdalene!!

Eva Rose: Who made the first stickers?
Shep: It was some Pilgrims. They took a picture and put this tree sap on the back of it.

Item	Shep’s estimate	Eva Rose’s estimate
New bicycle	$86	$30
New car	$559	$75
New house	$2,122	$1,000
Daddy’s salary	$1 million	$1,000
Teachers’ salaries	$1,000,036	$300
Bethie’s adoption	$1,000,573	$3,100
Dinner at a restaurant for 6	$42	$25
A new Barbie	$7	$6
Gallon of milk	$1.79	$4

Ruth Reitmeier <ruth_oh@alumni.rice.edu>	11/16/11
to me

All the kids have been very inquisitive lately about the nature of salvation and how God saves us.  I've been trying to explain that it's all God, nothing on our part.  That God does everything because we can do nothing.  That because Christ has done everything, we don't have to do anything.  This morning God gave me a great illustration to use that involved an incident with Ike.  I had a conversation over breakfast with Reece that went like this:

Me: Remember when Ike was here and fell into the pool on accident?

R: Oh yeah!  Hahahahaha.  Mrs. Dollahon totally freaked out and dived in to save him.

Me: Did she wait for Ike to cry out "Come help me!  Save me! I can't swim"?

R: No she just jumped in with her clothes on.

Me: Did she say to Ike: Swim to the edge and I'll pull you out?

R: No she threw off her glasses and dived in.  She dived head first!  She could've cracked her head on the bottom of the pool.

Me: So she didn't say "Hey Ike, grab onto this pole and I'll pull you to safety?"

R: Noooooo! She didn't say anything.  She just jumped in.

Me: That's right.  She jumped in to save Ike even before he realized he was drowning.  What did Jesus do for you?

R: He dived right in to save me before I even called for help.

 

Maggie: mommy, is Jesus a Longhorn?
Me: yes dear.
Maggie: so Satan is an Aggie?
Me: oh yes dear.

 

Eva Rose, 33 months old

I just found this picture that she drew on June 11, 2007.

She dictated a story to me to go along with it:

He's a bad boy. His name is Bad.
He's gonna hurt the bad boys.
He's bad cause he don't obey God.

Ike just yelled at Shep to give him something, and he answered, "Not with that attitude." Hm, wonder where he learned that.

QUIZ: One of the Dollahon children just decided that it made perfect sense to pee AND poop - like, a lot of poop - in a box in the garage. Which one?

Eva Rose doing the catechism with Maggie:
ER: 23. What covenant did God make with Adam?
Maggie: ummmmmm
ER: It's something that you do NOT like to do.


Answer: The covenant of works.

Mags:

Sometimes, when I drink water, I imagine all the germs in my tummy goin surfin in the water, and they're swimmin in the water, and the momma germs are puttin suntan lotion on the baby germs....

Rainbows are spicy, cause stripes are spicy.

I had no idea that being a mother would involve me saying things like "We do NOT wipe our poop on the carpet!!"

Picking up Ike from prek. 
Did you have a good day?
 'Yes.' 
what'd you do?
 'Get in twouble.'

Ike: GG bought the beach house dis truck
Me: GG bought you that truck when we were at the beach house?
Ike: Yes.
Me: GG loves you so much,
Ike: Yes.
Me: You love GG?
Ike: Yes. She take me to school. Safely.

Eva Rose: "What does it mean that God is spirit, Maggie?".
Maggie: "It means He fits in an inbisible box."

Lessons in holiness

 As Eva Rose barks off catechicsm questions to her little sister in the morning (one of their chores) she has all the charm and grace of a German SS field marshall giving a severe tongue lashing to a fresh recuit... "HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A SOUL? MAGGIE?! MAGGIE! IT'Z. BECAUSE. DER. BIBLE. TELLS. US. SO!"

This morning:

Eva Rose: "What does it mean that God is spirit, Maggie?"

Maggie: "It means He fits in an inbisible box."

-WD

Shep to Maggie: "I hope you never get fartable." I don't even know how to reply to this.

At the conclusion of his 3rd VBS of the summer, I ask Ike, "Ike, do you love Jesus?" He answered: "I  don wuv Chesus. I wuv Panda!!"

Sometimes at midnight or 1am or 3am I will wonder, Why am I awake? Then I will hear from upstairs one of my children cry out in fear, and I know why.

Shep: "I have a lot of remembories from when I was a baby."

Starting yesterday, every time that Ike asks for something and I tell him no, he responds with, "GG said yes."

Eva Rose, giggling, just handed me a picture she drew: Deadly Dora holding a knife, stabbing Boots. I was very concerned till she said Shep told her to draw it. Oh, okay then. And that's the difference between boys and girls. Girls do that, you call a psychologist. Boys do that, you just roll your eyes.

Driving to church, we discover our children's political leanings to be clearly defined upon the sight of a homeless man. Eva Rose: "He doesn't look so good. We should give him some of our money." Shep: "He'll just go buy drugs."

Shep in Sunday School

From: Joshua Stone
Date: Sunday, May 29, 2011
Subject: 
To: Mark Johnson , Walker Dollahon
Cc: Sean Dollahon , Phil Taddei , Chad Wilson , Eduardo Cardenas , Lance Orton



To be precise, the question asked by my teaching colleague was "What
are some skills you are learning right now?"

After his classmates said "fractions!" and "cleaning my room!" and
"spanish!" Shep hollered out, fast, almost garbled, "Cleaning my
penis!"

As I said, it took me a moment to process what I'd heard.  But I knew
I heard "penis," so I stood up and said in a pretty regular voice,
"Shep, come with me."

Outside the classroom door:
Josh:  Shep, what did I heard you say just now?
Shep [wearing a faint grin, studying my face]:  Cleaning my penis.
[laughter laughter]
Josh:  Shep, you know you can talk about that with your Mom and Dad,
right?  In your family, yeah?  [nodding his head, grin flashing on and
off] But you can't say it in class like that.  [at this his grin got a
bit more clearly defined.  He relished the thought of his joke,
clearly, so I dropped my hammer, and slightly my tone of voice]  It
was wrong.  I have to tell your Mom and Dad what you've said.
Shep [grin faded out, replaced by fear and faint trembling of voice,
also raised up an octave--like a little boy soprano tremulando]:
Nooo!   Don't tell my parents!  Puhleeeeeze...
Josh:  Yep.
Shep:  [more sadly yet] ...nooooooooo!  Please nooooooo!
Josh:  Don't worry, Shep, its for your good [I actually said that].
Your Daddy loves you, and I know your Daddy and I love him, so I know
he'll want to know about this, because he loves you.  See?  You got
nothing to worry about.  Make sense?
Shep:  [blinks]
Josh:  Ok, good.  Lets go back into class.

We walk back in the room and pass by Hampton Pillsbury.  In my memory,
now, he's leaning back in his chair, with his feet up on the table.
He sticks his hand up to Shep for a high five and says, "Nice one
man!" then jerks his thumb to the marker board, where Jen Needham, the
other teacher, had written "PERSONAL HYGIENE."

I'm feeling a little blue today because we're about to have to start all our paperwork over again as it has expired. I want my daughter. - Facebook 

Maggie made a Mother's Day card at school where she answered some questions for her teacher:

My favorite thing to do with Mom is play on the computer.
I love it when my mom kisses me while I watch TV.
I love my mom because she loves me, my family and God.

If my kids should ever accuse me of not loving them, I shall simply reply, "Whatevs. I drove all over town listening to Veggie Tales cds. If that's not love and sacrifice, I don't know what is."